“Wasn’t listenin’, I was just about to knock,” Brazos said airily as he pushed past and leant lazily on the end of Belle’s big brass bed. “But I couldn’t help overhearin’ some,” he confessed. “And seein’ as how we’re partners, Yank, why I don’t see no harm in me sittin’ in. Do you, Miss Belle?”
“Of course not,” Belle said, stretching luxuriously on the bed. Belle had changed into something more comfortable, a transparent creation which enabled Brazos to confirm his suspicion that Belle had one of the most generously-developed figures in the West.
Benedict went right on glowering silently at Brazos, but Belle didn’t seem to notice.
“Okay,” she said, “Bo’s got a hideout in the Maverick Hills just north of the town of Shoot across the border in Missouri. You could do worse than take a look there.”
“Thanks, Belle,” Brazos grinned and came around the side of the bed and kissed her cheek. “And you can bet money that if I’m ever back in Calico Valley, I’ll be callin’ back to visit Belle Shilleen.”
“Oh, you’re not leavin’ right away?”
“Sorry, but I reckon so,” Brazos drawled, going to the door. “Comin’, Yank?”
“Huh? Oh yeah, yeah,” Benedict replied. He was annoyed that Brazos had found out what he’d hoped to learn alone, but there was nothing he could do about it now. Then, as Brazos had done, he crossed the bed and kissed the woman. “Au revoir, Belle,” he murmured.
He made to turn away, but Belle had hold of his sleeve. “Hey, just a minute, honey,” she said warmly, rubbing her cheek up against his hand and purring. “You’re not in that much of a hurry, surely, that you can’t say goodbye to Belle properly.”
“Of course he ain’t, Belle,” Brazos grinned from the door. “When it comes to showin’ off his manners and doin’ the right thing, why, old Duke’s got everybody I know licked holler.” He sketched a salute at the glaring Benedict as he went out. “See you at the livery ... partner.”
Fourteen – Partners
Benedict was just getting dressed and buckling on his guns when Belle’s door was kicked open without warning and he found himself looking down the barrel of a six-gun and above it, a face he hadn’t seen since Pea Ridge, Georgia...
Benedict’s hand flashed to gun butt froze as Bo Rangle curled back the hammer of his hogleg and came striding in with a brace of dust-coated hardcases hard behind him.
“Don’t stop, tinhorn,” Rangle grinned, though the smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Seems I ain’t killed me a tinhorn all day.”
“Bo!” Belle Shilleen gasped from the bed, turning as white as chalk. “Bo, how, what... ?”
Bo Rangle motioned to Dunstan to take Benedict’s guns, then turned his frosty smile on the woman. “Big surprise, Belle? Yeah, I guess it is.” The eyes flicked significantly at Benedict. “Well, the truth is I just took it in my head to come along and take a look-see how openin’ night went. When I strolled in downstairs and asked where you were, why the girls did get themselves into a twitch, tellin’ me as how you were asleep and up the street, and gone back to visit your ma in Texas and Lordy knows what else. Right away I got me the stink of a skunk, didn’t I, boys?”
“Bo, please,” Belle pleaded, and Benedict could see that she was afraid, not for herself as much as for him. “Bo, it’s not what you think. I was just—”
“Entertainin’?” Rangle said amiably. “Sure, sure.” Then without a word of warning, lashed out with his six-gun. Benedict tried to duck. Too late. The barrel caught him across the forehead, knocking him back across Belle’s side table.
For an agonized moment Benedict fought against the blinding pain, then pushed himself erect. Bo Rangle was only a blur, but Benedict saw his head nod. The next second Dunstan’s iron fist smashed into his kidneys, followed by a punch from Skelley to the side of the head...
Benedict heard Belle scream as he lashed out. More blows rained down and a kick to the groin that sent a flame of agony pouring through him. He felt himself falling and heard Rangle’s mocking voice.
“Never did come across a tinhorn with a lick of guts. They’re good for nothin’ but cheatin’ with cards and shinin’ up to women that don’t belong to them.”
Rangle’s boot caught Benedict in the guts, doubling him to the floor, but with a fierce burst of tiger-like energy he regained his feet and butted Rangle viciously in the middle. He had the small satisfaction of seeing Rangle stagger before the hard fists of Dunstan and Skelley smashed him down again. He felt the carpet against his face, heard a great roaring in his ears, a flash of fire, then oblivion.
It was the smelling salts that finally brought him around. His head jerked up and he found himself blinking up into the face of Floralee. The girl smiled and stroked his forehead.
“Now you just stay right there, Duke,” Floralee admonished him as he swung his feet off the sofa. “You’re one sick feller.”
Duke Benedict didn’t need any hustler to tell him that. Thrusting the girl aside, he got to his feet, stood swaying for a moment, then lurched unsteadily across to the bar. Little Bob French didn’t have to be told what was needed. Benedict downed his large bourbon at a gulp, and found he could focus on his reflection in the bar mirror. He looked like twenty miles of bad road and felt like it too, until he remembered what had happened and anger overrode the pain.
He swung to face the room. Belle’s girls were all staring at him apprehensively. He spat blood and dabbed at his crimson lips. “How did I get down here?” he demanded.
It was Gypsy who answered. “They threw you downstairs after they beat you up, Duke. Oh, Duke, I’m so sorry we couldn’t warn you that they were here. It just happened so suddenly...”
Benedict tilted his head to the ceiling. “Are they still up there?”
“Yes.”
“And Belle, is she all right?”
Gypsy looked anguished. “I don’t know, Duke. We just daren’t go up. I’ve seen Bo mad before. He’s... he’s like an animal.”
“Not like one,” Benedict corrected, “he is one.” With that he straightened from the bar and walked a little unsteadily through to the adjoining room. When he reappeared, he was toting two six-guns left over from the wild night.
The girls paled when they saw the guns. Gypsy moved quickly to block his way to the hall doorway.
“Duke, you’re not goin’ up there again?”
Benedict pushed Gypsy gently but firmly aside and went silently out into the passageway. As he reached the stairs he heard a door open and the sound of heavy feet in the corridor above.
“The Madam ain’t available!” Bo Rangle’s wide mouth twisted as if the words scalded his mouth. “You jokers ever hear that sayin’?”
Standing either side of the door, Skelley and Dunstan nodded vigorously. Sure they’d heard it. In some sporting houses they even had a printed sign to that effect.
“The Madam ain’t available!” Rangle repeated, and his glare at Belle Shilleen was like a knife thrust.
“You were maybe expectin’ me to wait forever until you took it into your head to drop me a line, Bo?” Belle replied firmly. A dark bruise was spreading down one side of her face where Rangle had struck her after they had thrown Benedict out, but she still showed plenty of nerve. If anything the beating she’d taken from Rangle had given her added strength. “Why didn’t I hear from you in all that time anyway?”
“Because I’ve been goddamn busy. I’m still goddamn busy only I made the big effort to get down here for openin’ night. And what do I find? First I find some sort of a goddamn circus goin’ on so I got to lay low half the goddamn night. Then there’s a gunfight in the street, and when I finally mosey in with everything quiet, I find you two-timin’ me with a tinhorn dude. Some homecomin’.” He snorted in disgust. “Well I guess I cain’t rightly bellyache. Like they always say, never trust a whore.”
The words were meant to cut and hurt but somehow they didn’t. Studying her one-time lover gravely, Belle Shilleen was realizing just how
much he’d changed in three months. She’d heard rumors that he’d been having it hard with a bunch in Missouri and she believed it now. Bo Rangle had always been a cruel and violent man yet not without a certain reckless charm. Now the charm was missing and the cruelty and the violence seemed to have taken over.
Rangle went on to give her some more bad tongue, until realizing he wasn’t making much impression, he picked up his hat and jammed it on his head with an air of finality.
“All right, Belle,” he said flatly, “so you’ve crossed me, so that’s your right as a pathetic old whore I guess. But I’m afraid it’s goin’ to have to cost you, Belle. Now, what was our arrangement here, financially I mean?”
“Fifty-fifty.”
“Sounds a fair shake, wouldn’t you say, boys?” Rangle enquired of his henchmen.
They nodded in unison and he went on. “Yeah, sounds a fair shake to me. Maybe that’s where I made a mistake... bein’ too generous. Well all that’s past as of now. It’s now seventy-five percent for me, twenty-five percent for you... sweetheart.”
Belle Shilleen was too spent to protest. Two weary, it seemed, even to speak, she leant against the wall near her bed head, staring back at Bo Rangle with eyes that were almost as cold and hate-filled as his own.
Rangle understood that sort of emotion far better than he understood sentimentality or love. “Seventy-five, twenty-five, Belle,” he repeated softly, then with a mocking gesture, turned and strode for the stair head, his henchmen hard behind. They had gone less than half a dozen steps when Glede Skelley suddenly seized Rangle by the arm and jabbed a finger. “Hey, boss! Look, it’s the dude.”
Rangle looked, but didn’t see any dude. What he saw half-way up the stairs, was the head and shoulders of a hard-eyed pilgrim that bore a sketchy resemblance to the man they’d pounded into the floor and tossed downstairs a while back. Maybe it was the same man all right, but he sure didn’t look like any dude with those two cannons in his fists.
The trio lunged for cover and Benedict cut loose. Rangle was his prime target, but Rangle got behind black-bearded Dunstan. Lead smashed through lips and teeth. Dunstan screamed then stopped screaming as lead punched his head askew and keyholed out his neck.
Searching lead burned furrows out of steps and stairway as Benedict flung himself to one side and sent a searching scythe of .45s churning through the gunsmoke. He missed Rangle, got a bead on Skelley. Skelley’s gun hammered harmless lead into the ceiling as something punched him in the chest and iron blows broke him apart inside. Staring at his own blood curiously, he slumped into a sitting position against the wall and smiled foolishly as he died ...
There was no smile on Bo Rangle’s face, as from the cover of a doorway, he sent a bright tracer of lead screaming at the stairway and realized it was now one against one. He was confident he could beat the dude, even if he was one hell of a lead-slinger. But dare he linger to prove it, with sounds of the shots rolling far and wide out over the rooftops of Daybreak... the town that hated him and had driven him away...
The answer was no. Maybe he’d been reckless to come in here by daylight in the first place, but to waste another ten seconds now would be suicidal.
Consoling himself with a secret vow to level the score with that gunslick some way, somehow, Rangle triggered twice more through the twisting tendrils of gunsmoke and dashed for the rear balcony.
Benedict heard the thudding steps, sprang to his feet and sped down the hallway, leaping Matt Dunstan’s faceless corpse. By the time he reached the gallery, Rangle had jumped to the ground below, landed with the agility of a puma and was dashing across the yard for the horses, long coat flapping wildly behind him.
Benedict fired and knew right away he’d shot too fast. At the air whip of the bullet fanning his cheek, Bo Rangle spun on high heels and set two shots snarling back. One took a fist-sized chunk of timber out of the balcony railing, the second creased the side of Benedict’s skull.
The impact of the glancing blow drove Benedict spinning backward into the doorway, guns thumping loudly to the boards. He fell headlong, heard Belle Shilleen scream as she came rushing out...and the moment before blackness, the rapid stutter of Bo Rangle’s horse carrying him away.
Hank Brazos had a distinct feeling that he’d been through all this before as he headed for Buck Tanner’s livery by the sickly light of the next day’s dawn.
Yesterday on quitting the bordello after Belle had dropped the hint where they might look for Bo Rangle, he’d come to the livery, fed Bullpup, saddled up the appaloosa and was all ready to haul his freight and get a head-start on the tardy Benedict. He’d been actually mounting up when the guns had started up from the direction of Belle’s. By the time he’d reached the bordello, Bo Rangle was just a dusty speck in the distance, and upstairs in the passageway that looked more like a slaughterhouse, Belle was sobbing over Benedict quite sure he was dead.
Brazos had been sure too for a bad moment, until he took a closer look at the Yank and found out that he was only creased. Even so he didn’t really breathe easy for well over an hour when Benedict came conscious under Doc Murphy’s care, and by then Rangle was to hell and gone.
Brazos had lazed around the hotel all that day while the Yank lay up in his room, ministered to by Belle and some of her girls. It had been a long, dull day and he’d gone to bed early, still believing he would wait for Benedict to recover before taking the trail.
But that had been last night. This morning he’d awakened very early to the realization that he was being a fool. Benedict surely wouldn’t wait for him if their positions had been reversed. After all, it was Benedict himself who preached the gospel of looking out for Number One.
He reached the stables, went in and turned up the night light. Bullpup expected a little affection after several days of neglect, but had to be content with a quick cuff around the ears.
It took him only minutes to saddle up and get his warbag lashed into place. Yet even as he was buckling up the last cinch strap, Bullpup growled and a footfall sounded outside.
Brazos’ eyes snapped wide with surprise. “Yank!”
Benedict stood there against the gray sheen of the dawn sky, feet planted wide. He was fully dressed and had his warbag over his shoulder. He still wore the dressing the medic had put around his head, and his face was several shades paler than normal. Even so he looked tolerably healthy and tolerably unfriendly.
His expression a mixture of surprise and embarrassment, Brazos scratched his head, fidgeted, then said, “Why... why it’s sure nice to see you up and about so soon, Yank.”
Benedict walked in slowly, staring at the saddled horse. He dumped his warbag against the wall of a stall, tugged out his cigar case and cocked a sardonic eyebrow.
“You wouldn’t be thinking of riding off without me by any chance, would you, Johnny Reb?”
“Hell no, Yank,” Brazos said as if that was about the last thing he would have thought of. “No, I was just saddlin’ up for an early-mornin’ ride.” He patted the appaloosa. “He’s packin’ on fat standin’ around here doin’ nothin’ but work his way through a dollar’s worth of chaff a day.”
“Oh sure, sure. And the warbag’s just to add a little extra weight and help run off the fat. Right?”
Brazos sighed. He was a poor liar. He grinned, then he scowled.
It was finally Benedict who broke the uncomfortable silence.
“Well, Reb, how do we play the game? We both want the gold, but we don’t mean to share it. And now, we both know where to start looking. So what do we do? Ride separate trails and maybe end up trying to kill one another, or do we ride together, at least until we find out if there is any gold?”
Brazos looked ferocious, the way he always looked when he was trying to figure something out.
Finally he said, “The way I see it, Yank, if that gold is still about, then it ain’t goin’ to be easy to get hold of it, not when it’s in Bo Rangle’s hands, and with half the law of Missouri tryin’ to take it off hi
m.” He shook his head. “Too big a job for one man, Benedict, and likely too big a job for two.” Then he grinned. “But I reckon two would have twice the chance of one. What do you say?”
“I say I think it could work. We made a good team at Pea Ridge, Reb, and we’ve made a tolerably good team here.” The wide smile flashed as he extended his hand. “I say we ride together.”
Brazos’ big hand wrapped around his. “No double-crossin’ and no dealin’ from the bottom of the deck until we’ve got that gold, Yank.” A pause, then, “But the day we do find it, I guess it’s a case of every man for himself.”
“Why,” Benedict smiled. “I couldn’t have said that better myself, Reb.” He bent and hefted his saddle gear. “Okay, let’s get moving, we’ve got long miles to go.” They rode out together in brilliant sunshine with Bullpup swaggering along behind and farewell handkerchiefs fluttering from the upper balcony of Belle Shilleen’s. They’d come to this dusty little Kansas cowtown by separate ways, one driven by gold-fever and ambition, the other by nothing more than wanderlust. Now they left together as partners.
But partners for how long? Surely not much farther beyond the first opportunity either saw to double-cross the other?
So it would seem... and yet unsuspected by anybody, least of all the two men concerned, that wary handshake in a dusty livery stable in Daybreak, Kansas, was destined to be the foundation of an unlikely partnership that Destiny decreed would grow strong in time, strong enough to weather a thousand shared dangers, to survive ten thousand violent miles, and ultimately, over the years, to become a stirring chapter in the living legends of the West.
About the Author
© Melinda Jane
E. Jefferson Clay was just one of many pseudonyms used by New South Wales-born Paul Wheelahan (1930-2018). Starting off as a comic-book writer/illustrator, Paul created The Panther and The Raven before moving on to a long and distinguished career as a western writer. Under the names Emerson Dodge, Brett McKinley, E. Jefferson Clay, Ben Jefferson and others, he penned more than 800 westerns and could, at his height, turn out a full-length western in just four days.
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